Adrian Brown is away this week.

Russian Tatneft pushed the restart of its polyalphaolefins plant in the Republic of Tatarstan to the spring of 2016 as the company experiences procurement delays due to economic sanctions, an industry insider told Lube Report last week. The 9,600 tons-per-year plant is operated by the oil majors Nizhnekamskneftekhim subsidiary, a chemicals company. Russias only PAO plant, it has been idle for five years. Gabbas Ilyasov, the companys deputy director for development, said during an industry meetin...

While the United States remains the largest country market for finished lubricants, its overall growth is underwhelming, according to a webinar presented by Kline & Co. last week. The consultancys annual assessment of the global lubricants industry put the U.S. ahead of China in lubricant demand, accounting for 20 percent of global demand and 84 percent of demand in North America during 2014. However, said George Morvey, industry manager for Klines Energy Practice, we are essentially a flat ...

Tanzanias government introduced a 10 percent per gallon duty on base oils imported into Tanzania, with an additional 1.5 percent railway levy duty. The duties on finished lubricants and additives remained unchanged at 25 and 10 percent, respectively. Some local blenders raised concerns that the new tariff will hurt the competitiveness of locally blended lubricants. Irfan Khan, general manager for General Petroleums operation in Tanzania, said, It will surely affect our export orders, which we ha...

Vexapak LLC began operating a new 57,000 square foot blending facility in Houston this week. The new facility enables Vexapak to triple its storage and production capacity compared to its old building, the company said in a news release, creating a blending hub for both its domestic and export customers. The old facility was small, and there was no more space really to build more capacity, so we needed to go to a bigger place, Vexapak President Antonio D. Gonzalez C. told Lube Report. In additio...

Calumet Specialty Products Partners L.P.s board of directors named Timothy Go CEO effective Jan. 1, 2016. Go most recently served as vice president of operations for Flint Hills Resources, L.P. Previously, he spent nearly 20 years in senior level operations and management roles at ExxonMobil. Bill Hatch will remain interim CEO of Indianapolis-based Calumet until Dec. 31, and then remain an executive advisor to the partnership.